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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | July 7, 2023 11:28 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Mary Jo Daley |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Privacy Protection for Pregnant Women |
| While health care providers in the United States are subject to information disclosure provisions under federal law, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are not required to provide any similar privacy protections. A recent investigation showed that umbrella organizations use CPCs to collect and store extensive personal client data to create “digital dossiers” to surveille and attempt to influence decisions made by those who interact with CPCs. Such information often includes things like demographic data, sexual and medical histories, and ultrasound photos. A discovery by our state’s Office of Open Records revealed that CPCs sent records that included people’s names, along with the services they received, to Pennsylvania’s publicly funded CPC network. On its own, the disclosure of this information is an invasion of privacy, but increased efforts to regulate reproductive health care and vilify certain women who seek such care make access to the information troublesome and, potentially, dangerous. To address this concern, I will be introducing legislation that would put safety parameters around CPC data collection and prohibit CPCs from sharing personal information without written permission from those who visit the centers. Please join me in this effort to protect pregnant women by limiting the sharing of private, confidential information. |
Introduced as HB1589